


Perfect, or nearly as good as

by seki



Category: A League of Their Own (1992)
Genre: Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 10:47:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9120292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seki/pseuds/seki
Summary: Doris has always kinda wished she was more like Mae, but there's at least two people who think she's even better.





	

Doris has always kinda wished she was more like Mae. Pretty, of course -- life just seems to run smoother for anyone with a pretty face -- but it's the swagger, the confidence, the chutzpah that Doris really envies. It gets Mae most anything she wants; all she has to do is reach out and take it.

But Doris's life ain't so bad. Her papa knows she's strong, capable. Papa's proud of that. He sees she can dance, but since she's not the sort of girl that gets taken to the dance hall, he lets her work the doors. The war rips the men away, and in their absence Doris learns to lead, to spin, to flip the girls around like a man does. Learns to be courtly, like a gentleman, too; tell the girls they're pretty, bow to 'em, make even the homeliest gals feel like princesses for a while. It brings the girls back, even if there ain't enough menfolk. They still have a good time, and happy girls buy the sodas and tip the dancers that teach 'em the moves.

When they get into the Peaches, Doris knows she ain't one of the pretty ones. She ain't Marla either, mind -- it's petty, but it's nice to know you ain't the homeliest -- and she don't mind watching the beauty queens get all the camera time. She watches Mae, worried Mae _will_ mind, but Mae finds her place, the good-time gal who plays up to the cameras and winks and flirts. And the girls are all diamonds; not one of them tattles when Mae sneaks out to do the scandalous things she does with men. 

Marla gets a sweetheart, gets letters and love tokens that make her blush, and that stings for a bit. Marla? Courted? Doris isn't sure she wants a sweetheart, but she knows this: being left to last to be asked to the floor is _awful_.

It takes Roy and Abe showing up to six games in a row to make her realise she's being courted as well, by _two_ men at that.

Doris ain't sure she knows how to be courted, but Mae's there to make sure she takes the flowers and the tokens, Mae's there to curl her hair and button her into her dresses, and Mae's there to push her out of the door on a real date with Abe. 

He takes her to the movies, buys her popcorn and treats her like she's prettier than Mae, prettier than Dottie, prettier than Garbo up on that screen. It's enough to turn a girl's head, Doris thinks, and then scorns at herself. She ain't pretty. She's funny; one of the guys, someone a fella can get on with, that's her thing. Being admired like this is nice, but it ain't _real_.

She tells Mae, and then within a few days she's on a real date with Roy. He takes her to a bar, and they dance with each other and with the girls and guys there, and she laughs and drinks and thinks, this is more like it.

But he treats her a bit like one of the fellas, hands over the pretty girls for Doris to spin and flip, and that ain't right either.

She goes back to their digs, and tells Mae, and Mae tells her she's ungrateful, and maybe Doris is, but hell, she just wants a little of both ends, and something in the middle.

Roy and Abe come to every game, both of them, side-by-side with matching grins for her. They ask her on dates, and sometimes she goes out with one, and sometimes she goes out with the other, and she promises nothing to either of them, and suddenly she's the gal with two regular beaux. Mae's no help, only laughs and curls Doris's hair and tells her she's got nothing to be ashamed of, and if Roy or Abe minded then they'd tell her to choose, and they haven't. So what's the problem?

They haven't.

Next time she agrees to go out with Roy, she tells him to bring along Abe too. It's funny, being there with both of them, in the bar. They watch the dancers, and Abe takes her out for a number and then hands her off to Roy, and then she hands _him_ off to Abe and they dance like two guys who ain't ever had to follow a lead before and it's so funny she can't stop hooting at them. Goofballs. But her goofballs.

It takes her a fair few slugs of liquor to ask them if they mind, and then to make 'em understand what she means.

"You're my gal," Abe says, with a shrug. 

"And mine," Roy says, and they look at each other and laugh like it don't matter, and that's that. She's the gal with two regular beaux.

Mae laughs her socks off, when Doris tells her. "Worse than me," she chants, "shameless, shameless, what would your papa think--"

Doris shoves a pillow over her face, but it don't stop Mae laughing, and in the end Doris is laughing too. Look at them both, the trollops of the team. Who'd have thought. She lets 'em both court her, and to hell with anyone who tuts; sometimes Roy takes her out, and sometimes Abe, and sometimes the pair of them, and Abe treats her a little less like she's Garbo and Roy treats her a little less like she's a guy in a dress. She don't let either of them get more than a kiss or two, of course -- she loves Mae, but she don't wanna _be_ Mae -- but neither of them stop courting her.

The season ends, and Doris goes back to New Jersey and the dancehall. Where she's a celebrity, to her surprise. Guys are lining up to dance with her, and she owes her papa, so she dresses up pretty and follows their leads and smiles, and sneaks glances over at the line of girls sitting and waiting to be asked. It ain't right, and she makes the fellas promise to ask one wallflower for a dance after they've taken her around the floor, and soon the whole place is hopping like it should.

Three weeks in, and suddenly Roy's there, smiling at her from the back of the little crowd that's always around her now. She turns down two other fellas -- kindly, with a laugh and a joke -- before she lets him whirl her around, and she forgets where she is for a while. She ain't in New Jersey, she's in Rockford, and Roy's taking the lead for a slow dance, and soon he'll hand her off to Abe, and Mae'll slide in to let Doris spin her around and dazzle everyone. That's how her best nights go, these days.

The dance ends, and she remembers where she is, and for a moment she's sad, and then Roy spins her, one hand held high, and she turns automatically and hands her to Abe, who bows over her hand all fancy-like and then gives her that big grin he usually gives her from the bleachers.

Oh. Abe's here too? That's perfect, exactly what she wants, but it makes her panic at the same time. One beau she could introduce to papa, but two… two ain't respectable.

Doris hauls them both over to the bar, gets them both sodas on the house, and then stares at them. Her beaux. Neither of them are the best-looking guys on the planet, but she ain't no Garbo and they like her though she drinks and sweats and plays baseball and laughs and eats without any of the graces she's supposed to show as a Peach. And they put up with her not choosing either of them.

"Which've you am I supposed to tell my Dad I'm goin' steady with?" she asks, in case one of them has a decent answer for her.

They look at her, and then at each other. Abe puts his soda down, and nudges Roy. "Me," he says. "We agreed, before we drove here. Roy's gonna be my brother, come up to see the country with me."

"You guys _drove_ here?"

"Sure did," Roy says, and gives her the grin that makes him look so like Abe they _could_ be brothers.

Doris swigs back her soda. They came all this way, to see her?

Abe's a _diamond_ when he meets her papa, practically glows when he says he's so proud of her, that he thinks she's the best player in the league, better than most of the guys he's ever seen play too, and that's exactly the right thing to tell her papa. She sits there in her little dress and hat, and watches her papa tell her beau that he's a decent sort, and that he's glad his daughter's seeing someone who won't get in the way of baseball. And Abe looks over at her, and says she's the prettiest girl in the league too, and it's so obvious he believes it that her papa's struck speechless for a bit.

Abe. He's a sweetheart.

He and Roy stick around for a week; Roy meets Doris's papa too, shakes his hand, tells him he thinks his brother's a lucky fella for having a gal like Doris.

The next season is hard, but as coach Dugan always says, hard's what makes it great, and it's great too. She's still the gal with two beaux, and stays that even when Mae finally falls head over pretty heels for a soldier with a broken wrist. She brings 'em both to Mae's wedding, which isn't fancy but Mae makes her maid of honor, and Mae tells her she'll be that even if she's not a maid or _honorable_ any more. It's a joke, and they giggle like they always have.

That night, drunk on liquor and the word _maid_ , Doris invites both Roy and Abe up to her hotel room. There she kisses first Roy, then Abe, then Roy again while Abe strokes her arm, then Abe again, and then she loses track.

It's wicked, she knows, sinful beyond anything even Mae has ever done.

Doris is certainly no maid by the time morning rises, and she lies there watching the dawn light stream through the flimsy curtains. Abe's glasses are on the table by the window; he's near-blind without 'em, but that didn't seem to stop him. Roy's tie is on top of her sash on the chair, the rest of their clothes scattered on the floor. She's naked as the day she was born, and she's got Roy's arm slung over her belly and Abe's head on her shoulder, and now she sees why Mae was always slinking off to cavort with men.

It's not perfect. But it's _very_ good.

The Peaches win the season, and her beaux come to _nearly_ all the games. Roy has to miss two, and Abe three, but there's always at least one of them there to kiss her cheek at the end of a game, and Mae to hoot at her when they both do, and the rest of the Peaches all help her sneak out and in of the digs. Neither Roy nor Abe has a job that keeps them _that_ flush, so sometimes Doris is the one who pays for the motels, but that feels right too. She ain't the sort to let a fella pay for everything, nor even for both fellas to pay for everything. Sometimes it's just Abe, and sometimes just Roy. She likes it best when it's both, but she knows it's greedy to always want that.

When they drive up to see her, this time, in New Jersey, Roy takes her out to a movie, and then the next day they both take her for a drive to Atlantic City. They stroll up and down the boardwalk, arm in arm in arm. 

After they go see a show that evening, Abe tells her he went for a drink with her papa, and got his permission to ask for her hand in marriage.

Marriage?

He kneels, out there on the boardwalk, and gestures to Roy, who tosses him a little box. It's a ring, a real ring with a little diamond that flashes with all the neon colours around them.

"But--" she says, and looks over at Roy. She can't marry them both. That ain't fair, ain't right.

"It's okay," Roy says, and he puts his hands in his pockets. "We talked it over. I paid for half the ring."

"But--"

"Doris," Abe says, "my knees are getting muddy. Hurry up and say yes."

She holds out her hand, which is shaking. She stares at that, when's she been the kind of gal whose hands shake? Roy laughs at her, and puts out a hand to steady hers as Abe slides the ring into place.

They get married here in New Jersey, her and Abe. Abe tells her his mother will want them to do it all over again in Rockport, in the fancy reception her papa insists on afterwards, and Doris nearly trips over her feet. She's never even met Abe's mother.

Abe chuckles. "I'm kidding with ya. My mother died four years back."

She smacks him in the arm, and he laughs, and hands her over to Roy, nearly as scrubbed-up as Abe in his best man garb, and he hands her over to her papa who kisses her on both cheeks and tells her she's not allowed to get herself pregnant, has to win a few more world series first, she hears?

They sneak Roy into the wedding suite, and Roy gives Abe a kiss to congratulate him, a sort of joke at first, but then Abe kisses him back, and Doris stands there watching as it keeps happening, eyes wide. It's okay, she thinks, watching them, the surprise fading. They've always shared her. She can share them, too, and to hell with whether it's right or respectable, it's right for them.

That night, Abe sleeps in the middle, and Doris doesn't mind one bit.

Roy's their lodger, if anyone who doesn't know asks, and nobody's there to see that the lodger's bed is never slept in. Roy cooks them breakfast, and Abe cooks them dinner -- perfect, since she can't cook for toffee -- and Doris does her best to pick up around the house so it doesn't become a slum, and life is full of kisses and trophies and sunlight for a while.

She wins two more world series in a row. She doesn't go back to New Jersey in the off-season now, but Roy drives her back across the country to visit twice, with Abe curled in the back seat with a book all the way. When her papa comes to see her, Roy offers him the lodger's room with a smile, tells him he can't have his sister-in-law's papa sleep on the sofa.

After three nights, Abe and Doris sneak Roy up into their room. It feels wrong, now, not being crowded in the bed, not seeing Roy and Abe cuddle up to each other, and it's really a relief when Doris's papa gets back on the coach to New Jersey. She comes home from tearfully seeing him off to find Abe and Roy waltzing around their front room to some old song on the wireless, and she's missed it so much she nearly cries, and then they both worry and come to hold her and she wonders why she's such a wet mop at the moment.

Mae takes over the lodger's room, in between husbands, and of course it's Mae who laughs at her for trying to pretend Roy's not sharing their room. Mae tells her she's shocked, then that she's envious, and then asks how long it's been since Doris last bled, and that's how Doris figures out she's pregnant.

Doris's papa comes back down, and they go out to celebrate. It's all going great until that evening, when Roy sneaks into their room and crawls into the bed and then, suddenly, it's Roy that's crying.

Her papa took him aside, man-to-man, and told him he'd need to move out, because the baby's going to need a room, and surely he can't expect to always live like some kind of spinster aunt in his brother's house.

"Nonsense," Doris says, and she forces it to a whisper.

Abe gets out of the bed, and goes over to the dressing table. He puts on the little lamp, and pulls on his glasses, and rummages around in the top drawer. Doris is still cuddling up to Roy, whispering nonsense, and is a bit annoyed that Abe's left the comfort work up to her, but she watches as Abe frowns, and writes down some things, and crosses other things through, and by the time he comes back to bed with the top sheet of paper Roy's all cried out.

"A bigger house," Abe says, holding out the paper. "We can afford it. Doris can't drink until the baby's here, that's gonna save us a fortune by itself."

She whaps him in the arm, and he grins at her, and then slips into the bed on the other side of Roy, and takes over the comforting work with kisses and caresses that keep Roy from thinking about any of it until he's asleep.

Doris picks up the sheet of paper in the morning, after Roy sneaks back out. Abe's right, they can afford it, if they pinch a few pennies here and there. He's been thorough, and accounted for her loss of earnings while she's busy being mama. That makes her heart sink, just a little. She'll never play again, if she's mama now, will she? Evelyn managed, but her kid was old enough to get hauled around with them, and it'll be years until this baby's that old.

Abe comes up behind her, and takes the paper from her hand. "You're frowning."

She's always been honest with them, and she's not gonna stop now. "I'm gonna be a mom," she says, helplessly. "Bye-bye, baseball."

"Nah," he says, easily, and presses a kiss to her cheek. "Of all of us, I'm the one that earns least. If'n you want, once he's weaned, I'll be mom. You'll be back in play in a year, two most."

"You won't mind?"

He adjusts his glasses. "Or Roy can be mom, if he likes. When have we ever done things the way other people do, huh?"

It's not until the baby's born -- and what a drag that is, Doris swears she ain't doing it ever again -- that Doris stares down at the boy in the crib with Abe's surname and wonders if he's even Abe's. Maybe he's Roy's? He's hers, at least, and that seems to be enough. Little Jimmy gets fussed over by a whole mess of Peaches, new and old, and his namesake promises to pitch some balls with him when he's old enough. Roy and Abe both fuss over the kid plenty, and she catches them waltzing around together with the kid held between them to soothe him, and her papa likes the new house and the yard outside it and when she tells him that Roy's helping with the baby he just snorts and lets it go.

It's funny, though. The bigger she got, the less she cared about the thing that got her pregnant in the first place, and Roy and Abe seemed to think that was normal. They'd wrestle and grunt with each other, next to her in their bed, and kiss her afterwards and cuddle her. Roy'd tell her she was a diamond for going through this, a real trooper, and Abe'd tell her she was prettier than Garbo even when she could barely waddle and had to be helped up out of chairs.

Afterwards, too, she's too busy with the baby, and it's months before either Roy or Abe tried to kiss up to her like before. She lets them, but it's not the same as it used to be.

It doesn't matter. She still shares their bed -- still loves being squished into the bed with both of them, cuddles and kisses and loving words -- and she's come to like watching them together, and they gradually realise she'd rather they satisfied _that_ with each other than with her, and they've never done things the way other people have anyway, and it's not perfect but it's better than Doris ever thought it could be.

Mae's visits get longer and longer. Roy and Abe get used enough to her visits that Doris'll hear them talking sweet with each other while Mae's in the room, and she don't even pretend to blush any more, even if Mae tells her she's a shocking disgrace and Mae's so envious she could spit, and then they smoke and get liquored up and gossip while the menfolk take care of Jimmy for the evening.

Jimmy's gonna have questions, when he's old enough. Hell, her papa's phone calls are getting to the point where she's pretty sure he knows Roy ain't Abe's brother.

It don't matter. Doris don't envy nobody else, not any more. She got a life she loves, a job she loves, a kid she adores and two men who're the best family she could ever want. And sometimes they'll dance her around the room, and sometimes each other, and sometimes she spins Mae around and flips her just because she still can, and if Jimmy ever asks then Doris'll tell him: baby, nobody can ask for more than that in this whole world. If it ain't perfect, well, sometimes, it feels just like it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Er. I watched the film today on TV and had feelings about Doris and Mae's friendship, but somehow this is what fell out onto my keyboard because damn right Doris gets two admirers turning up and cheering her on side-by-side.
> 
> (and probably I have used time-inaccurate slang and references a few times because this was written so fast -- sorry if so. feel free to suggest corrections!)


End file.
